November Meeting Highlights

View pictures from the November 2007 NCR-SARE meeting

Here are some highlights from our recent meeting in Des Moines. For those of you who weren't able to attend, this should help you keep up with things that we accomplished at the meetings. This highlight serves to remind you of what NCR-SARE accomplished.

Highlights from Fall 2007 NCR-SARE Meetings

• Approved grad student grant program for another year with similar timelines to what we have used the last few years; a call for proposals will be posted on our website by Dec 1, 2007. [The CFP was posted on Nov 20, 2007, with proposals due Jan 23, 2008.]

• Approved full funding for six PDP competitive grants and partial funding for a seventh. Authors of all proposals will be notified in the next few weeks.

• Made a slight change to the AC election policy so that there are at least two nominees per position when there is an election instead of at least three. The Executive Committee will examine AC membership issues and election/appointment of people in at-large positions and bring the issue back to the AC for discussion at a future meeting.

• Discussed mechanisms for keeping in touch with alumni (former members of the Administrative Council and Technical Committee). Agreed that we should try to start an NCR-SARE alumni association; we should set aside some funds for a student intern to help with this effort, we should provide a small amount of seed funds for alumni to travel to alumni events (with the understanding that the effort should eventually become self-supporting), we should try to recruit at least one volunteer alumni coordinator – possibly one from the eastern part of the NCR and one from the western part, and we should have an initial gathering of alumni who will be attending the 2008 national SARE Conference.

• Agreed, tentatively, that we would hold the spring AC meeting noon, March 5 to noon, March 7, 2007 at the Ramada Inn near the Mall of America in Bloomington MN. The FRG Review Committee will meet March 4-5, 2007 and their meeting will overlap one-half day with the AC meeting. It was suggested that we send information about the hotel’s food supplier to Bob Wills, who will work with staff and the hotel on use of local foods, and that we investigate possible excessive noise from the airport, which is right across the road from the Ramada.

• Farmer Rancher Grant recipients, Larry Jacoby and Judy Moses of Downing, WI gave a presentation on grant project FNC05-584, "Design and Pilot a State Approved Mobile Slaughter Trailer for Halal Custom Slaughter."  Their presentation illustrated the difficulties faced by Somali refugee families in Wisconsin who are looking for halal meat.  The humane restraint equipment developed through the grant project provides a feasible and affordable system for custom slaughter of sheep and goats for both producers and consumers. More information is available at the Spirit of Humane web site.

• Collected names of potential reviewers for our invited R&E proposals.

• Discussed the NCR-SARE Youth program, which has intentionally been a very loosely organized program. There was a desire to provide some funds and assistance for the program if SARE receives a significant budget increase this year.

• Approved up to $25,000 in NCR-SARE funds to sponsor a series of small-group listening sessions on North and South Dakota reservations to follow up on the June 2007 AC meeting in Bismarck ND. The listening sessions are being planned by the group that planned the Bismarck meeting.

• NCR-SARE State Coordinators enjoyed a local foods training session by Rich Pirog from the Leopold Center and some community members from Decorah IA.

• Staff from MN and NE will look at the NCR-SARE expiring funds balances in NE to see if there are enough funds to increase the size of individual scholarships or to make more scholarships available for the national SARE Conference in Kansas City MO.

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